Tears in a Bottle

by Sylvia Bambola

  “Wait a minute, just back up. Are you telling me you’re ashamed of what I do, ashamed of me?”

  “I wasn’t at first. I thought you were helping these girls. That you were doing some good. I remember how softhearted you were. How the first time you did an abortion you came home and cried and threw up, then went to bed for two days. I should have realized then that this was not the line of work for you.”

  “But I am doing good. These girls come to me when they’re in trouble. Someone has to help them. And it’s me they come to for—”

  “You’ve changed. It was gradual, but I’ve seen it coming for a long time. First the anger, then the hardness. Sometimes the way you talk, I think you hate your patients.”

  “How would you feel if the same girls kept coming in over and over again? They don’t see what you scrape out of them, they don’t see…and no gratitude, never any gratitude. I read it in their eyes, the fear, the anger, the sorrow, but never any gratitude, never any thanks. That’s why I’m out of it. I’m a businessman now. Let the others scrape and suction, I’ve no stomach for it anymore.”

  “So, you do hate your patients. Then I was right. Maybe in some strange way, your work has made you hate me. Made you hate all women.”

  Thor laughed. “I don’t hate women. I just hate the fact that every time they get themselves into trouble they expect some man to bail them out. Just like you, Teresa. Every time you’re unhappy about something, you think I can fix it. Well, I can’t. You think all you have to do is shed a few tears and I’ll fall all over myself to make you happy again. Well, I’m not happy either. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “When I cry it’s for us…because of us. Because you’re so distant and you keep pushing me out. I love you and want—”

  “You think I want a crying, whining wife hanging around my neck all the time? Why do you think I had so many…female colleagues? I’m tired of baby-sitting you, Teresa. Talk about dignity! You’re the embarrassment.”

  Teresa rose from the chair and adjusted her blue suit jacket. She looked stunning even with the frown on her face. Her lip was no longer quivering, and she stared into his eyes for an instant then looked away. “I don’t want to hurt you, Thor. And we’re both vulnerable right now and it’s too easy to say mean things. So please believe me that what I’m going to say is not out of spite. Stop trying to compete with your Grandpa Hugh. You can’t build what he did with abortion clinics. It’s killing you, Thor. This whole business is killing you. It’s killed our marriage and now it’s killing you. I tried to hang in. I didn’t want you to be all alone.”

  “What do you mean, all alone? You think I have no one else?”

  “Other women, yes…but no one…no friends.”

  “You forget about Louie?”

  “A man like Louie doesn’t have any friends.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong, Teresa. They don’t come better than Louie.”

  “I’m glad you think so. At least it won’t hurt so much when he ends up owning everything. And the way you’re going, he’ll own it all.” Teresa opened the door to leave but stopped when Thor called her name.

  “You’re wrong, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “I am doing good. I help people. I provide a valuable service. Because of what I do, a cure for cancer may be found, or some new medicine discovered. I do a lot of good. A lot of good.”

  Teresa shook her head sadly. “Hang on to your name, Thor. Because being related to Hugh Brockston may be all that you’re going to be left with.”

  Thor sat staring into his fish tank, not really paying attention to the black-and-yellow Clowns as they darted past the staghorn coral. All his life he had heard the whispers that he was just another Brockston who wouldn’t amount to anything. Mother had not wanted him to follow the “family foolishness,” the propensity to squander large amounts of money. He knew that’s why she had talked him out of business and into medicine. No Brockston had ever gone into medicine.

  But his less than brilliant performance in medical school landed him near the bottom of his class and with few options. Well, he had made the best of them. And he wasn’t going to lose everything. The hemorrhaging would stop now. He was going to get rid of Newly…and Louie. If he could pull off the deals with Dorianna Gray and Second Chance Foundation, it would go a long way toward curing his financial ills. He’d finally have enough money to get out from under. Teresa would see how wrong she was. Then let her try crawling back. Who wanted her anyway? But as he dialed the phone, Thor could feel a dull ache well up inside where he had not felt anything in a very very long time.

  “Louie? Yeah, hello again. Listen, I need another favor…put it on the tab. No, I don’t want to place a bet. No, nothing like that. What I want is for you to get one of your friends in the persuasion business, someone who’s not going to get carried away. No, the letters didn’t work. No, I don’t want anything drastic. Get someone with a soft touch. I just want a friendly message sent. Nobody gets hurt…”

  Becky and Skip held hands and talked in the back of the school bus, waiting for the other thirty kids to get off first. When the bus was nearly empty, they got up and went outside. Behind their bus was a string of other buses, like a giant yellow ribbon bending and winding along the curb. A dozen schools across the county had sent their interested high school students to converge in front of the shimmering glass hotel. Mammoth blue windowpanes, stretching ten stories high, made the hotel look like an ice mountain.

  Becky smiled at Skip and snuggled closer to him as they walked through the blue-glass door. Ever since she told him she was going to the youth convention, he had been less uptight with her. Yesterday alone, he sent her two notes telling her how much he loved her. Coming here was a small price to pay for such devotion.

  For too long she had been on the wrong path. It was like her body chemistry had been out of balance, her brain not thinking clearly. But she was thinking a lot straighter now. Not so confused, so childish. After all, she was going to college next year. She didn’t want to go away like some silly goose, some country bumpkin who didn’t know the score.

  Two Planned Parenthood staff smiled and greeted them in the plush hotel lobby, then pointed to a thickly carpeted hallway. Two more Planned Parenthood staff ushered them into a room filled with rows of chairs. Each chair had a little desktop that collapsed to the side when not in use. All the desktops were snapped into place. Blue and pink folders, alternately placed, made the room look like a giant checkerboard. Another smiling staffer instructed the boys to choose a desk with a blue folder and the girls a pink one.

  Becky headed for a row of chairs closer to the back, and Skip obligingly followed. When they were settled, Becky opened her folder and began leafing through some of the brochures. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Skip leaf through his. She noticed he had a booklet in his folder that she didn’t, and grabbed it.

  “Hey, how come I don’t have one of these?” She quickly read the title. The Problem with Puberty.

  Skip smiled and shrugged and tried to get it back, but Becky held it so he couldn’t reach. Then she began leafing through the pages. She suddenly stopped when she saw a drawing of five people in a bathroom, all nude. A young man sat in the tub. Around him sat an old woman and young girl. Behind him stood another man and a woman. In front of the tub sat a dog. She could feel her face redden, even before she began reading the caption, “It is normal to have all kinds of fantasies while you are mastur…” She snapped the book shut and handed it back to Skip. Her cheeks burned and she wouldn’t look at his face. They couldn’t all be wrong: Skip, her parents, her friends, her teachers, her school, and now this organization that her principal spoke so highly of. They couldn’t all be wrong.

  Maggie sat on a metal folding chair, praying for wisdom as she looked into the faces around her. She had been meeting with this Project Rachael group every Wednesday afternoon for eleven weeks. Next week would be their last, and it would not be held here in t
he little Life Center kitchen but in St. Ann’s Chapel, two blocks away.

  She smiled at the ten women who sat around the table.

  How different their faces were from when she first saw them. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten…you will have plenty to eat, until you are full and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed. Maggie knew these women still had a long, difficult road to travel, but they had come so far. Yes, God had done a mighty work.

  She was sure the ladies were all ready for next week when they would spiritually baptize their babies at St. Ann’s, or rather Father Talbert would. The women were hungry for closure. They had all written their baby a letter, had acknowledged if it was a boy or girl, had named their child. The baptism would give them all a finality they craved.

  Maggie cleared her throat, took a deep breath. “Okay ladies, any questions about next week, about what we’re going to be doing there?”

  A heavyset woman in her fifties raised her hand. “Tell us again about that little angel pin.”

  Maggie’s smile grew. “Well, you and your husband or boyfriend will stand before Father Talbert and—”

  “But if we don’t have a husband, is that okay?” the woman asked.

  “My new boyfriend wasn’t the father of my aborted baby. Can I bring him?” asked another girl.

  Maggie put up her hand. “Ladies, you can bring whoever you want to stand with you at the altar. And if you don’t want to bring anyone, that’s okay too. But as I was saying, you and your guest will stand before Father Talbert, and he’ll lay hands on you and pray for you. And then he’ll spiritually baptize your baby.”

  “Go through that again, would you? The spiritual baptism, I mean,” one of the ladies said.

  “You’ll speak out the name of your aborted child, then symbolically hand him over to Father Talbert, who will symbolically hand him over to Jesus.”

  “And that’s when he’ll give us the little gold angel?” the heavyset woman asked.

  “Yes, he’ll give you one pin for each child you have aborted.”

  “To remind us our child is now in the arms of Jesus and waits for us in heaven?” The heavy woman closed her eyes.

  “Yes,” Maggie said, and watched the woman smile.

  Two teenage boys entered the Life Center, each carrying a large cardboard box.

  “Delivery,” one of them said, not looking up at the receptionist. His cap was pulled low over his face. “Where do you want them?”

  The receptionist leaned over her desk to get a better look. “I don’t believe we were expecting anything.”

  Strange noises were coming from the boxes.

  “All I know, lady, is that we were told to deliver these to you and to open them so you could check out the contents.”

  “What is it? Who sent them?”

  The two youths deposited their boxes against the opposite wall, and one of them pulled out a utility knife.

  “Wait! Don’t open it. I can’t accept unauthorized merchandise.” The receptionist appeared flustered and rose from her desk. “Just wait here while I get the director. Please don’t do anything until she comes.”

  But even as the receptionist walked down the hall, the boy slit open the top of his box, then handed the knife to his companion who did the same to the other box. Then both boys ran out the front door.

  By the time Maggie and the receptionist rounded the corner of the hallway, they could see a black mass swarming over and around the boxes. A few of the girls had left the group to stretch their legs or go to the ladies’ room and were trailing behind. Maggie stopped suddenly and turned toward them. “Go back to the kitchen.”

  “We’ll just be a minute,” one of them said.

  “Go back to the kitchen, now!” Maggie’s face was tense, and the girls strained to see beyond her for the cause.

  Then someone screamed, then someone else, and before long the hall was full of screams. Other women came out of the kitchen to see what was happening, and they added their screams to the chorus. Then they began pushing and shoving and running blindly, trying to get out of the path of the swarming mass headed their way.

  Maggie tried to lead the women into the kitchen where they could close the door. But the rats were already crawling over their feet.

  “So, what did you think of the conference?” Skip ran his fingers through Becky’s hair and watched it fall and shimmer against the headrest.

  “It was okay.”

  “Most of the day you look embarrassed.”

  “I wasn’t embarrassed. Well, some of it was pretty raw, you must admit.”

  “Yeah. But I’m glad you came. I’m surprised your father let you, being the way he is, so strict and all.”

  “It was my mother, actually. And she must’ve thought it would be okay with Dad or she wouldn’t have let me. She never goes against Dad, even when he gets weird.”

  “Didn’t your dad ever talk to you about sex?”

  “Once.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Be careful, just be careful.’ I guess that’s why Mom thinks he’d want me to learn about contraceptives and things.”

  “Makes sense. He’s a guy. He knows the ropes. He just wants you to be sensible and not mess up your life. Every father worries about his daughter. I mean, it’s the girl who gets pregnant. It’s the girl who really has to be careful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, but?”

  “If that’s the case, why does he dislike Paula so much? Ever since that incident with Paula and Denny in her car, well, he’s given me such a hard time and doesn’t like me to go out with her. I always thought it was…well, because he didn’t approve of girls doing that.”

  “Becky, no father wants his daughter to be like Paula.”

  “Why not? You just said he’s a guy and guys know the ropes and they don’t struggle with sex the way girls do.”

  “Yeah, but Paula’s different. She’s…well, she’s fast. She’ll do it with anybody. She’s not selective. You have to think ‘disease’ nowadays. You have to think, ‘Who has this person been with?’”

  Becky pushed Skip’s hand away and rolled down the car window. She hated the smell of the vanilla air freshener that hung from his rearview mirror. It gave her a headache, or had she come with it? It had been a horrible day. She hated the conference. People blowing up condoms, playing with wooden dolls. She had counted the minutes for it to be over. The whole thing didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right. Maybe that’s why she had agreed to come with Skip to Lover’s Cove. Why she was sitting in his car enduring the disgusting smell of mock vanilla. Why she would let him finally have his way. Because she had to make it right. She had to get over this virginity thing. To get rid of it once and for all. Maybe then it would all make sense to her.

  Skip gently put his arm around her shoulders. “What are you thinking?”

  Becky inhaled the crisp night air and continued to stare into the darkness outside. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t want to see him, to see the eagerness, the hope she knew was etched on his face like a child beneath a Christmas tree. “I’m wondering if someday you’ll say about me what you just said about Paula.”

  “Becky, that’s impossible. You’re nothing like Paula. Nothing at all. You’re special and I love you. You’re the only girl for me. I love you, Becky. I really do.”

  Maggie pulled into an empty parking space behind her apartment and sighed with relief. She felt she had lived through a nightmare. Even now she could visualize the mass of furry bodies swarming over everything. Maybe a hot shower and fresh clothes would help her forget.

  When Maggie got out of the car, she noticed a black BMW pulling alongside the curb. She had to pass it on the way to her apartment, and when she did, the door flew open and a thin, very attractive woman jumped out. For a moment the woman just stood on the sidewalk barring Maggie’s path. The stranger looked as if she was ab
out to say something. But then she jumped back into her car and sped away.

  Becky undressed slowly, dropping her clothes, like rose petals, along a path by her bed. She slipped into her pajamas, then pulled her diary from its hiding place. She wondered if she should write anything. What if Mom found it? But before Becky even came upon the proper page, she knew there was no way she could stop herself. Not tonight.

  Dear Diary,

  Today I became a real woman. Funny thing is, I don’t feel more grown up. I feel…betrayed. It was nothing like the movies make it out to be. It was awkward and embarrassing and…painful. It’s not supposed to be like this, is it? Maybe it was my fault. Maybe it’s me. I’m beginning to think there’s something seriously wrong with me. I thought I loved Skip desperately, madly. But something wasn’t right. I tried to fake it. I told Skip it was wonderful for me. I don’t think he believed me. I could tell by the caring way he spoke to me afterwards, telling me it would be better next time, that it usually gets better and better. But what he said didn’t comfort me at all. The only words that kept ringing in my ears and that filled me with dread were “next time.” Because suddenly I knew there was going to be a next time, and a next time, and a next time. As long as I keep going out with Skip, there could be a thousand “next times.” Because now, how could I ever say “no” to him again?

  So, Diary, you want to know how it feels to be a woman? It feels sad. It feels very very sad.

  3

  THOR EMERSON THREW A few diced clams into the tank and watched his Clowns rush to the surface. This exercise didn’t give him any pleasure today. It had been almost a week since Teresa left, actually had a van come and move out all her things.